The problem with Hillary Clinton’s candidacy isn’t that she would take office at the age of 69. An older and more mature president is not a bad thing. It’s how little she has done in that time.

After 2008, when Hillary was beaten by an even more inexperienced candidate, most people forgot just how little experience she has holding elected office.

Hillary Clinton only won one political office and she did so in her fifties. Despite winning two elections, her Senate career only covered the period from January 2001 to January 2009.

It’s more time than Obama spent in the Senate, but that’s not saying much.

JFK was considered young and inexperienced after spending 14 years in Congress. Hillary Clinton isn’t young, but her experience in elected office at the age of 69 will be less than his was at the age of 44.

Hillary’s supporters will argue that she has plenty of experience in public life. Unfortunately it’s the wrong kind of experience.

Like Elizabeth Warren, a slightly younger and more left-wing Hillary clone, she spent a good deal of time in the corrupt intersection between leftist non-profits, corporate boards and politically connected legal positions. The bad lessons those posts taught her are evident from Whitewater and HillaryCare.

Hillary Clinton embodies the corrupt culture of Washington D.C. whose cronyism and nepotism she has far too much experience with as the other half of a power couple notorious for personal and political corruption.

When they left, Bill and Hillary trailed illegal pardons and stolen property behind them. As recently as 2008, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote, “The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.”

Back in 2001, he had suggested that the Clintons might one day be “led away in handcuffs”.

That’s Hillary Clinton’s real experience and it’s not policy experience or foreign policy experience. It’s the politics of political corruption. Hillary Clinton’s track record doesn’t consist of policy achievements. It’s in the people she knows and owes favors to, the legion of corrupt associates of Clintonworld and the millionaires and billionaires who fund her unscrupulous political ambitions with their dirty money.

If Hillary’s last name were still Rodham, no one would have even proposed her for Senate. There is absolutely nothing in her record or her ideas that recommends her for higher office.

Not only is she inexperienced and inept, despite her many makeovers she is a colorless figure with the speaking style and fashion sense of a college registrar, and a bureaucrat’s cagey instinct for pre-emptive cover-ups that only make her look more suspicious even when she didn’t actually do anything wrong.

Hillary Clinton did nothing of note either as Senator or Secretary of State. The reason why her time in the Senate is remembered on the left for her Iraq War vote and her time as Secretary of State is remembered on the right for Benghazi is that there isn’t anything else to remember her for.

The high points of her national career are negative; terminated from Watergate after unethical behavior, a failure on government health care as First Lady, an Iraq War vote that she spent five years lying about and the abandonment of Americans in Benghazi as Secretary of State.

And a track record of trying to blame her decisions on everyone else.

Despite voting for the Iraq War, Hillary blamed Bush for a “rush to war” and for “triggering” the conflict. Few on the left have forgotten that she had even more positions on the Iraq War than John Kerry and that her positions changed completely based on what was going on in America and Iraq at the time.

When it came to Benghazi, other people took the fall for a horrifying failure that she claimed to be accepting responsibility for, while her own pet committee shifted the blame onto others.

Hillary Clinton accused Obama of being unready for a 3 A.M. phone call, but does anyone believe that she would take a 3 A.M. phone call and make a quick decision in a crisis? Is there anything in her track record in the Senate or as Secretary of State that suggests that she is bold and decisive?

Anything at all?

Hillary Clinton carefully avoided a track record. In the Senate, she invariably went with the least controversial position on every issue until she began overcompensating on Iraq to win back the left.

In the Senate, she was for a ban on flag burning, Cap and Trade, nuclear power, for Israel, for Palestine, for abortion, against abortion, for harsh criminal penalties, against harsh criminal penalties, for No Child Left Behind, against No Child Left Behind, for gay marriage, against gay marriage, for medical marijuana and against medical marijuana.

If the polls opposed gay marriage, she was against it. If the polls supported it, she was for it. The same went for everything else.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton staked out a bold position in favor of visiting other countries and shaking hands with their leaders.

This is not a woman who takes 3 A.M. phone calls. Not without polling them first and issuing a non-definitive statement in the vaguest possible language that she can’t be held accountable for in any way.

This isn’t a record that speaks of experience. It’s the record of a woman working hard to avoid ever having an experience, a position or a conscience.

JFK came into the White House having seen combat and having come close to dying many times. He had spent almost a decade and a half in Congress and taken positions on important issues.

Hillary Clinton may be almost 70 at that same point, but without a fraction of his experience, and she has tried to make up for it with childish lies like claiming to have come under sniper fire in Bosnia, claiming to have negotiated open borders for refugees in Kosovo and claiming to have been instrumental in the Irish peace process.

It’s no wonder that the chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in Watergate said of her, “She was a liar.”

Hillary’s experience is as imaginary as her work bringing peace to Northern Ireland. The issue isn’t her age; it’s her lack of principles and her lack of courage. Hillary Clinton compensates for a mediocre career of political cronyism with ridiculous lies in an act of neurotic insecurity.

Hillary Clinton isn’t too old to be president. She’s too adolescent, untried and immature. She has made too few decisions that matter, taken too few risks and even less responsibility and lives an imaginary Walter Mitty life of death-defying adventures that only exist in her mind and her press releases.

Hillary isn’t just incompetent, corrupt or a liar. Like too many of her peers, she’s a 66-year-old child.

She may run and win but opponents will have plenty of material with which to expose her true, wicked self.It was David Geffen who said, "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, .A prominent conservative female journalist nails it for Benghazi:

Could You Lie to a Bereaving Father?Mona Charen - May 2, 2014

The Ben Rhodes memo revealing the duplicity of this administration on the subject of Benghazi reminds us about the character of those involved. That President Barack Obama could lie so evenly and so passionately (remember the second presidential debate?) is not perhaps surprising at this stage. But let's not forget what it took for Hillary Clinton to lie to the grieving father of an American hero.

First, a refresher on the facts (as they were certainly known to the principals):

A convoy of well-armed terrorists rolled into the complex housing the American consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. The attackers sealed off streets leading to the consulate with trucks and then commenced the attack on the building using rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, mortars and artillery mounted on trucks. Ambassador Chris Stevens called Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks for help, saying, "Greg, we're under attack." Hicks, who was in Tripoli, conveyed this up the line, but no help arrived.

The terrorists killed Stevens and another American and set the building ablaze. (Two more Americans would die later attempting to protect the annex.) As soon as the next morning, Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, described the attack as a "commando-style event" with "coordinated fire, direct fire, (and) indirect fire." A few days later the Libyan president said that it was a planned terrorist attack. He also said that the idea it was a "spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous." Yet a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign by the Obama administration managed to put the press off the story and mislead the American people.

The brazenness and scope of the disinformation would make any KGB colonel sigh with admiration. At 10:32 on the night of the attack, Clinton issued a statement deploring violence in response to "inflammatory material posted on the Internet." In the days that followed, the president and his spokesman repeatedly invoked the supposedly offensive video as the cause of the attack. The president and secretary of state even filmed commercials to play in Muslim countries denouncing the video while also upholding America's tradition of religious and political freedom. "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," said the president. "But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence."

But as the State Department finally disclosed a month after the attack (and as had been widely reported before then), there was no protest outside the American consulate in Benghazi. Nothing. Not a peep.

As the Rhodes memo makes clear, the president sent his U.N. ambassador to the Sunday shows to lie. Susan Rice was "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." Rice did as she was told. The election was less than two months away. A foreign policy failure would not be politically convenient, so it would be made to go away. It's one of the minor injustices of this sorry story that Rice has received more condemnations than the president or secretary of state, who pulled the strings.

Clinton began to peddle the "Internet video" story from the first moments after the guns went silent in Benghazi. When the Libyan ambassador to the U.S. apologized to her on Sept. 13, 2012, for the "terror attack," she ignored this and burbled on about "the innocence of Muslims."

The president, vice president and Clinton welcomed the bodies of Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith and Glen Doherty to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Sept. 14. According to Woods' father, the vice president used remarkably offensive locker room talk about the deceased Navy SEAL, but Clinton stayed on message. She greeted the man whose son had bravely attempted to fight off far more numerous and better-armed terrorists on the roof of the CIA annex and who gave his life. Did she praise the courage and self-sacrifice of the decorated Navy SEAL? Did she express regret that he had been left nearly alone to fight off the Islamist terrorists? No. Not even the flag-draped coffins spread before Clinton could shake her iron determination to stick with the script. She told Woods they would catch the guy who made the Internet film and make sure he was punished.

Most politicians are capable of stretching the truth on occasion. But this question, this setting and this egregious a lie suggest that Clinton's conscience -- if she ever had one -- is growing flaccid from disuse.

Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department repeatedly declined to fully go after the terror group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of girls.

The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.

In the past week, Clinton, who made protecting women and girls a key pillar of her tenure at the State Department, has been a vocal advocate for the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the loosely organized group of militants terrorizing northern Nigeria. Her May 4 tweet about the girls, using the hashtag #BringOurGirlsBack, was cited across the media and widely credited for raising awareness of their plight.

On Wednesday, Clinton said that the abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.” Clinton said that as Secretary of State she had numerous meetings with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and had urged the Nigerian government to do more on counterterrorism.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram “are likely sharing funds, training, and explosive materials” with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.

Secretary of State John Kerry eventually added Boko Haram and its splinter group Ansaru to the list of foreign terrorist organizations in November 2013, following a spate of church bombings and other acts that demonstrated the group’s escalating abilities to wreak havoc.

‪Being placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use certain tools and authorities, including several found in the Patriot Act. The designation makes it illegal for any U.S. entities to do business with the group in question. It cuts off access to the U.S. financial system for the organization and anyone associating with it. And the designation also serves to stigmatize and isolate foreign organizations by encouraging other nations to take similar measures.

The State Department’s refusal to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization prevented U.S. law enforcement agencies from fully addressing the growing Boko Haram threat in those crucial two years, multiple GOP lawmakers told The Daily Beast.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy.”“For years, Boko Haram has terrorized Nigeria and Western interests in the region with few consequences,” Sen. James Risch told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “The U.S. government should have moved more quickly to list them as a terrorist organization and brought U.S. resources to track and disrupt their activities. The failure to act swiftly has had consequences.”

Risch and seven other GOP senators introduced legislation in early 2013 that would have forced Clinton to designate the group or explain why she thought it was a bad idea. The State Department lobbied against the legislation at the time, according to internal State Department emails obtained by The Daily Beast.

In the House, leading intelligence-minded lawmakers wrote letter after letter to Clinton urging her to designate Boko Haram as terrorists. The effort in the House was led by then-Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King and Patrick Meehan, chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

Meehan and his Democratic counterpart Jackie Speier put out a lengthy report in 2011 laying out the evidentiary basis for naming Boko Haram a terrorist organization, including the group’s ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and to Somalia’s al-Shabab terrorist organization.

In an interview Wednesday, Meehan told The Daily Beast that if Clinton had placed Boko Haram on the terrorism list in 2011, U.S. law enforcement agencies now being deployed to Nigeria to help search for the girls might have been in a better position.

“We lost two years of increased scrutiny. The kind of support that is taking place now would have been in place two years ago,” he said. The designation would have “enhanced the capacity of our agencies to do the work that was necessary. We were very frustrated, it was a long delay.”

Moreover, Meehan and others believe that the Clinton State Department underestimated the pace of Boko Haram’s growth and the group’s intention to plan operations that could harm U.S. critical interests abroad.

“At the time, the sentiment that was expressed by the administration was this was a local grievance and therefore not a threat to the United States or its interests,” he said. “They were saying al Qaeda was on the run and our argument was contrary to that. It has metastasized and it is actually in many ways a growing threat and this is a stark example of that.”

Not everyone agrees that Clinton’s failure to act had significant negative effects. A former senior U.S. counterterrorism official told The Daily Beast that despite the State Department’s refusal to put Boko Haram on the terrorism list, there were several other efforts to work with the Nigerian government on countering the extremist group, mainly through diplomatic and military intelligence channels.

“Designation is an important tool, it’s not the only tool,” this official said. “There are a lot of other things you can do in counterterrorism that doesn’t require a designation.”

Had Clinton designated Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization, that wouldn’t have authorized any increased assistance to the Nigerian security forces; such assistance is complicated by the Leahy Law, a provision that prevents the U.S. from giving weapons to regimes guilty of human rights violations.

“The utility was limited, the symbolism was perhaps significant, but the more important issue was how we were dealing with the Nigerians,” this official said, noting that three Boko Haram-related individuals were personally sanctioned during Clinton’s time at State.

Meehan and his Democratic counterpart Jackie Speier put out a lengthy report in 2011 laying out the evidentiary basis for naming Boko Haram a terrorist organization, including the group’s ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and to Somalia’s al-Shabab terrorist organization.

In 2012, more than 20 prominent U.S. academics in African studies wrote to Clinton, urging her to not to label Bok Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. “An FTO designation would internationalize Boko Haram’s standing and enhance its status among radical organizations elsewhere,” the scholars said.

Inside the Clinton State Department, the most vocal official opposing designating Boko Haram was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, who served in that position from 2009 to 2013. Several officials said that the Nigerian government was opposed to the designation and Carson was focused on preserving the relationship between Washington and Abuja.

Carson defended the decision to avoid naming Boko Haram a terrorist organization in a Wednesday phone call with reporters.

“There was a concern that putting Boko Haram on the foreign terrorist list would in fact raise its profile, give it greater publicity, give it greater credibility, help in its recruitment, and also probably drive more assistance in its direction,” he said.

The U.S. has plenty of ways to assist the Nigerian government with counterterrorism even without designating Boko Haram, Carson said. The problem has long been that the Nigerian government doesn’t always want or accept the help the U.S. has offered over the years.

“There always has been a reluctance to accept our analysis of what the drivers causing the problems in the North and there is sometimes a rejection of the assistance that is offered to them,” Carson said. “None of that has anything to do with putting Boko Haram on the foreign terrorist list.”

Twenty female senators wrote to President Obama Tuesday urging him to now push for Boko Haram and Ansaru to be added to the United Nations Security Council al Qaeda sanctions list. (Earlier this year, Boko Haram’s leader express solidarity with al Qaeda affiliates in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, Somalia and Yemen, according to the SITE Monitoring Service, which tracks jihadist communications.)“In the face of the brazen nature of this horrific attack, the international community must impose further sanctions on this terrorist organization. Boko Haram is a threat to innocent civilians in Nigeria, to regional security, and to U.S. national interests,” the senators wrote.

The White House declined Wednesday to say whether or not the president will push for Boko Haram to be added to the U.N. list.

“Boko Haram, the terrorist organization that kidnapped these girls, has been killing innocent people in Nigeria for some time,” National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Lalley told The Daily Beast in a statement. “We’ve identified them as one of the worst regional terrorist organizations out there. That’s why last November we designated them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. And we're actively exploring -- in partnership with Nigeria and others -- broader multilateral sanctions against Boko Haram, including UN Security Council sanctions."

Representative for Clinton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The hILL is already out along with Obamster on the talk circuit turning this into the her image of girl power. Of course this is horrific. Along with all the other horror stories that come out of Africa as long as I can remember. Black on Black crime. Remember Bush I going into Somalia for humanitarian reasons?

But she seizes on this to change the topic from Lewinsky and it fits her gender twist. IF 200 Black boys were murdered she would have been silent.

Typical Clinton change the story, twist to her political game and benefit and the journalist MSM do everything to give HER free press. Why is it her opinion even matters now on this?

ROBIN ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: Benghazi, the new investigation. Are you satisfied with the answers and are you content with what you know what happened?

HILLARY CLINTON: Absolutely. I mean, of course there are a lot of reasons why -- despite all of the hearings, all of the information that’s been provided -- some choose not to be satisfied and choose to continue to move forward. (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?) That’s their choice. And I do not believe there is any reason for it to continue in this way, but they get to call the shots in the Congress.----------------------------

Then why did you lie about the cause of the attack? Where were you when the US decided to surrender and send no help? Did you rise up and object? Who witnessed that? Why did they close the embassy in Tripoli for security risk if what happened in Benghazi was merely a video protest that just got out of control? Since you utteredt he same words BEFORE the Ben Rhodes memo, were you the author of that national lie?

To all these officials of all administrations, we shouldn't have to wait and buy your damn books to find out what happened when we trusted you with our national security interests.

Morning Jolt. . . with Jim GeraghtyMay 8, 2014Whoops! Guess What Hillary Didn't Do While She Was Secretary of State . . .

Boy, this is awkward:

Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department repeatedly declined to fully go after the terror group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of girls.

The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government's ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.

In the past week, Clinton, who made protecting women and girls a key pillar of her tenure at the State Department, has been a vocal advocate for the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the loosely organized group of militants terrorizing northern Nigeria.

What Clinton didn't mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the UN headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen Senators and Congressmen.

"The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn't use. And nobody can say she wasn't urged to do it. It's gross hypocrisy," said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. "The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials."

Anybody else think we'll be hearing a lot about Boko Haram between now and Election Day 2016?

May 9, 2014Signs of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Culture of Complacency

Of course:

.

Notice this from Jeryl Bier on the State Department's reluctance to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization:In 2012, even U.S. State Department diplomats in Nigeria seemed mystified about why the government was "reluctant" to issue the designation.On September 20, 2012, then Bureau of African Affairs Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson appeared on a State Department "Live at State" webchat regarding "U.S. Policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa." Questions from journalists and other individuals via webchat were posed to Carson by the host, Holly Jensen. At one point, a question was asked by the "U.S. Consulate in Lagos [Nigeria]":

MS. JENSEN: The U.S. Consulate in Lagos wants to know: Why is the government reluctant to designate the Boko Haram sect as a foreign terrorist organization?AMBASSADOR CARSON: Thank you very much. We look at the issue of Boko Haram as a major concern not only to Nigeria but also to Nigeria's neighbors and Niger and Cameroon and Benin as well. Boko Haram, we believe, is not a homogenous, monolithic organization, but it is comprised of several different kinds of groups.. . . In the September 2012 webchat, Carson seemed to suggest that the State Department did not even consider the "Boko Haram movement," as he called it, to necessarily be a terror organization, but rather several groups simply "focused on trying to discredit the Nigerian Government":

[CARSON:] But we believe that the bulk of the Boko Haram movement is -- they're focused on trying to discredit the Nigerian Government, trying to do everything in its power to show that the government is ineffective in the defense of its people and in the protection of government institutions, so we have not designated the entire organization. We constantly keep that under review, but we have, in fact, designated the three top leaders in Boko Haram who we believe to be out establishing broader terrorist networks and who have a broader jihadist agenda that goes beyond simply discrediting the Nigerian Government.

As I laid out on Campaign Spot yesterday, Boko Haram's terror tactics were crystal clear by 2009; by 2012, it was ludicrously inaccurate to characterize them as "focused on trying to discredit the Nigerian government."

With Benghazi and now Nigeria, we have two examples of State Department people on the ground sending back warnings of gathering terrorist threats . . . and in both cases, the warnings were ignored.

Remember all the talk about New Jersey governor Chris Christie's alleged culture of bullying within his administration? How about the signs of a culture of complacency in Hillary Clinton's State Department?

==========================================

The Saga of Boko Haram and Hashtag Diplomacy

The tough face of Obama diplomacy If you ask most Americans about Boko Harum, they might think you're talking about the psychedelic rock band Procol Harum, best known for "A Whiter Shade of Pale." But this band is a group of Islamic terrorists who are deadly serious about their craft, including the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls in April.In an effort at social media diplomacy, First Lady Michelle Obama was photographed with a sad face and holding a sign with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. This seems to be in conjunction with a second social media effort by some Hollywood actors who play tough guys on screen admonishing the terrorists that #RealMenDontBuyGirls -- one threat made by Boko Harum was to "sell them in the market, by Allah." It doesn't seem that a Twitter hashtag game would dissuade them.Unfortunately, in the real world, there isn't much that can be done to Boko Harum at the moment, at least not without potentially putting the kidnapping victims at risk. The group was on the State Department's radar screen, but then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resisted for two years labeling it a terrorist group, which may have hampered our present ability to respond.The obvious question is why did the State Department resist? A look at the timing and narrative provides the answer. After Boko Harum bombed the UN headquarters in Nigeria's capital city, Abuja, the CIA, the FBI and others urged the State Department to place the group on the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The group had ties to al-Qaida, however, which Barack Obama claimed he had "decimated." Hence, no terror designation for Boko Harum. Clinton can tweet, "We must stand up to terrorism," all she wants, but that doesn't explain her dereliction of duty in doing just that when she actually had authority.Trying to manage Obama's flailing foreign policy, there's no question the State Department is also suffering greatly under the feckless leadership of John Kerry. But our bitter foreign policy harvest was sown by Clinton. Had sanity prevailed, Boko Harum would have been added to our terrorist watch list two years ago. Instead, as Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review, "Mrs. Clinton and President Obama have convinced themselves that they know more about Islam than Muslim terrorists do, and that the peaceful, pliable, progressive Islam they have concocted somehow renders the jihadists' Islam false." There are over 200 Nigerian girls and young women who would beg to differ.This self-deception has proven dangerous and destructive, and the new hashtag for the Obama/Clinton/Kerry State Department should be #CriminalIncompetence. Finally, if nothing else, we see once again that Clinton is utterly unfit to serve as commander in chief.

Hillary Clinton’s leadership as Secretary of State regarding the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram could become at least as serious an issue as her decisions surrounding the attack on the U.S. consulate Benghazi.

Much of the attention Thursday was on the announcement that the House will create a select committee to investigate Benghazi, but the same day, Daily Beast reporter Josh Rogin revealed details about her time as Secretary of State that raise significant questions about her broader record on issues of terrorism.

Rogin reported that from 2011 through early 2013, the Clinton State Department repeatedly rejected efforts to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. In recent weeks, the group has exploded onto the world stage by kidnapping more than 250 girls at a Nigerian boarding school.

It is so clearly and vividly a terrorist organization that it seems indefensible that the Clinton State Department would have refused to designate it as such. A thorough investigation of the decision process that protected Boko Haram from 2011 until late 2013 could be devastating.

Now that Boko Haram has attracted worldwide attention for its vicious assault on young girls, political leaders, including former Secretary Clinton, are rushing to issue emotionally powerful but practically meaningless statements.

Hillary tweeted: "Access to education is a basic right & an unconscionable reason to target innocent girls. We must stand up to terrorism. #BringBackOurGirls" Hillary's tweet contrasts vividly with her failure to stand up to terrorism in 2011 by naming Boko Haram for what it was.

The requests to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization were serious and came from very responsible authorities.

As Josh Rogin reported:

“What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the UN headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen Senators and Congressmen.

“’The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,’ said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. ‘The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.’

“In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram provided a ‘safe haven’ for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and was likely sharing explosives and funds with the group. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.”

The protection of Boko Haram from designation as a terrorist organization is even more unbelievable when you read the description of the group’s activities in the American Foreign Policy Council's World Almanac of Islamism.

Consider the following highlights:

• Boko Haram means "Western education is sinful."

• The initial Boko Haram organization grew to an estimated 280,000 followers. In 2009 there was a huge fight with the Nigerian Army and over 1,000 followers and the founder were killed.

• A revitalized Boko Haram launched an attack on Bauchi prison on September 7, 2010.

• Since then they have carried out over 600 attacks killing over 3,800 people.

• Boko Haram's orientation can be discerned in its support for Taliban-like extremist Sharia and its designation of its original encampment in northern Nigeria as "Afghanistan."

• The Nigerian terrorists have allied with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and a number of transnational terrorist groups.

• On Christmas Day in 2011 Boko Haram staged church bombings.

• Boko Haram has deep ties with extremists in Saudi Arabia. Supposedly dozens have been trained in Afghanistan.

Given these facts it is amazing that Secretary Clinton's State Department refused to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, since clearly it was engaged in terrorist activities. Why would the department she led not call a terrorist group a terrorist group when it was in her power to do so, and, as Rogin reports, the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and many members of both the House and Senate were urging her to do just that?

Rogin reports that some U.S. officials, and possibly the Nigerian government, opposed the listing because they thought it might give the group more publicity. But this is a fairly weak rationale. For one thing, Boko Haram seems to have managed the publicity part on its own. And despite designating three individuals associated with Boko Haram as terrorists in June 2012, by refusing to list the organization, the State Department was denying the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department the tools they were seeking to use against the group as a whole and anyone linked to it.

It is a potentially devastating addition to a record as secretary of State that included a number of decisions favoring the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (after abandoning a longtime U.S. ally there), as well as appeasing a virulently anti-American regime in Iran--moves that have not turned out so well, to say the least.

Now the Boko Haram decision raises a whole new set of questions.

How could the Clinton State Department reject naming Boko Haram as a terrorist group?

Who was involved in blocking Boko Haram's terrorist designation?

Are any of the so-called experts who were totally wrong still at the State Department?

Did Secretary Clinton have anything to do with refusing to designate Boko Haram?

If not, was she even aware of the controversy? Shouldn’t she certainly have been aware, considering the number of federal agencies and members of Congress that were asking her to designate the organization?

These questions about Secretary Clinton’s record are potentially even more serious than the questions about Benghazi. As Congressman Patrick Meehan, who chairs the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told Rogin, by failing to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization in 2011, “We lost two years of increased scrutiny. The kind of support that is taking place now would have been in place two years ago.”

In light of the recent events in Nigeria, Secretary Clinton and other key State Department officials owe the American people some answers about their decisions.

Monica Lewinsky wasn’t brought back from a cul-de-sac of the ‘90s celebrity scandal universe, where Kato Kaelin still sleeps on a couch, Amy Fisher stalks quiet Long Island streets and Tonya Harding skates around in circles, in order to hurt Bill and Hillary.

Vanity Fair brought Monica in to help them.

That’s why it’s Monica’s essay in Vanity Fair and not the essays of any of the women whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and whom Hillary Clinton tried to silence.

Hillary’s political career was built on Monica Lewinsky and cancer. Rudy Giuliani’s cancer. Without Monica and cancer, instead of running for president she would be delivering a commencement address at Bennington College and the dean would be introducing her as Hillary Rodham.

Monica made Bill and Hillary into the victims of their own misbehavior. Vanity Fair is hoping that Democrats forget the political dysfunction, sellouts and blatant corruption of the Clinton years. Its editorial staff is hoping that they’ll get angry about Ken Starr and “privacy violations” all over again.

But Bill and Hillary aren’t victims. They’re two dysfunctional people with a knack for making their personal problems into the country’s problem. They’ve done it before and they’re doing it again. They deal with their personal problems, just as they dealt with Monica Lewinsky, through abuses of power.

Monica was disposable. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. Bill and Hillary treated her the way they treated any woman who became an obstacle to their political ambitions. That’s a step up from how the Kennedy clan treated inconvenient women by drowning them, drugging them or lobotomizing them.

Feminists are debating whether Hillary was right to call Monica a “narcissistic loony toon” instead of discussing the private War on Women she waged against any woman complaining about her husband’s behavior. It’s a cheap distraction from what really matters. The outrage over the War on Women, ‘90s edition, featuring stops at the Tailhook Symposium and Anita Hill’s Department of Education digs, did not extend to abuses by powerful liberal men. There was one set of feminist rules for a drunken Navy lieutenant in Vegas and another for the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.

As long as he was a liberal.

Monica isn’t a victim either. Liberal feminists were hypocritical in their treatment of her, but they were far more hypocritical in their treatment of the women Bill Clinton sexually harassed. Talking about how unfair they were to Monica lets them off the hook for how unfair they were to women who did not want a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton and who demonstrated more authentic feminist creds by speaking out about it than the professional liberal feminists who smeared and demeaned them to protect Bill.

There was a power imbalance between Bill and Monica. And Bill Clinton is a compulsive manipulator, but Monica wasn’t a child. She chose to have an affair with another woman’s husband and was humiliated because that man was the President of the United States. The outcome was inevitable.

Hillary Clinton was right to call her a “narcissistic loony toon”, but Hillary, running for president on a platform of her own Monica-manufactured celebrity, is an even more narcissistic loony toon than Monica could ever aspire to be. And Bill Clinton, who chases cameras as avidly as he chases women, is the king of all narcissistic loony toons.

The real victim wasn’t any of these three repulsive characters. It was the United States of America.

The American people wanted good government and instead got a demented duo whose uncontrolled appetite for power, admiration and everything else, including White House furniture, knew no limit.

And they’re still the victims today.

There are two types of victims. There are those Americans who consented to have a political relationship with Bill and Hillary. Twice. And there are those who didn’t.

There are the Monica Lewinskys and the Juanita Broaddricks.

There are Americans who were raped by the Clinton Administration. And there are Americans who chose to be abused by it and would still be willing to be abused by it all over again.

Obama and Clinton voters have much in common with Monica Lewinsky. They caused their own problems and yet, like Monica, they whine about being unable to find work. They blame Republicans for humiliating them by revealing their disgusting relationship with a politician who is a serial liar.

And they act as if the whole thing is someone else’s fault.

They whine that if it hadn’t been for the Republicans no one would know just how disgusting their affair with the man who wrecked the country’s national defense, sold pardons like hotcakes and used his own adultery to position his wife’s presidential bid was.

They complain that if Republicans would just shut up about Benghazi, the national debt, the return of Al Qaeda, the imperial presidency and the constant lies leaking out of the White House, no one would judge them for that faded Obama-Biden sticker on the back bumper of their taxpayer subsidized Prius.

They’re not the victims. Victims don’t choose to be victims.

It’s the women who didn’t accede to Bill Clinton’s sexual demands and were smeared by Hillary Clinton for daring to complain about it… who are the victims. It’s the Americans who didn’t play Monica Lewinsky at the ballot box, surrendering to Bill Clinton’s charms while ignoring a funny little man in a cave who was threatening to attack America after bombing its embassies, who are the victims.

Monica Lewinsky is the Clinton and Obama voter, narcissistic to a fault and incapable of acknowledging fault, feeling victimized but unable to point to the real perpetrator, blaming Republicans for exposing her sordid behavior and that of the man who was taking advantage of her, and then complaining that she can’t find work.

Who needs a special essay from Monica Lewinsky when any Obama voter will tell you the same story?

The real victims of Bill, Barack and Hillary are the hardworking Americans who do the best they can for their families and their country, who don’t make excuses for their misbehavior or the misbehavior of their politicians, who work hard at their jobs and work harder to raise their children.

They are the victims of bad governments and bad politicians they didn’t vote for. They are harassed and assaulted by a corrupt political machine, a power-mad bureaucracy and a degenerate Washington establishment. They did not consent to be abused by Bill, Barack, Hillary, the EPA, the DOJ, the BLM, the FEC, the IRS and every other alphabet soup agency out of D.C.

And they are smeared and demonized when they complain about it.

They are the real victims of the abusers, exploiters and manipulators in Washington D.C. whose lust for power knows no limits. And they are also the victims of the Monica Lewinsky voters who whine and make faces, but refuse to end their political affair with the abusers of their country.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

"Barring the release of audio, it is impossible to determine whether Rove uttered the words “brain damage,” but it’s also beside the point. The point was that through his words prospective 2016 voters were reminded of Clinton’s 2012 health issues and, by extension, a host of loosely related things, including her age (69 were she to be elected in November 2016) and her family’s past resistance to transparancy.

And Clinton was reminded that, if she runs, her opponents will be merciless and not always bound by reality."

Oh, cry me a river! POOR Hillary. She's SO put upon by mean old nasty Karl Rove. Of course neither she nor her husband have ever employed such mean, nasty tactics. They're just innocent victims. And she's a WOMAN, for God's sake! How could Rove be so insensitive? Gag me.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Did Clinton OK Surveillance?By DICK MORRISPublished on TheHill.com on May 13, 2014

A new book by Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden's journalistic confessor, charges that former United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice asked the National Security Agency to spy on U.N. diplomats from countries casting the swing votes on the Security Council on whether to toughen sanctions on Iran.

So did then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approve the surveillance? Did she know about it?

We need to know if the person who wants to be president of the United States approved and allowed the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats.

In Greenwald's book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State, he charges that as the Security Council met in May 2010 to consider tougher sanctions against Iran, Rice asked the NSA for help "so that she could develop a strategy" to win over the votes of undecided diplomats. Greenwald bases his accusation on leaked agency document unveiled by Snowden.

The NSA obligingly moved ahead with the paperwork to get approval to spy on diplomats from four Council members: Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Uganda. On May 26, 2010, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the surveillance. What was the conceivable connection with terrorism that justified these taps?

But, the move worked. All four nations fell in line and voted for the sanctions.

Afterward, a grateful Rice wrote the NSA thanking it. She said that the intelligence helped her to know when diplomats from the other permanent Council members -- Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France -- "were telling the truth ... revealed their real position on sanctions ... gave us an upper hand in negotiations ... and provided information on various countries 'red lines.' "

Unless she had blinders on, Clinton must have known of this surveillance and, most likely, would have been privy to the intercepts themselves. Whether she approved this kind of cloak-and-dagger diplomacy, which sows distrust of America all over the world, is a key question as her presidential candidacy looms.

Clinton had previously directly ordered spying on foreign diplomats in connection with the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December 2009. Again, documents from Snowden reveal that the NSA conducted surveillance on foreign delegations and monitored their communications, giving U.S. negotiators advance information about other nations' positions at the meeting.

The NSA monitoring likely played a role in a dramatic moment at the conference when, according to reports in The New York Times, "Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret. The intrusion led to new talks that cemented central terms of the deal, American officials said."

Jairam Ramesh, then the Indian environment minister and an important player in the talks, asked why the U.S. spied on rival delegations: "Why the hell did they do this and at the end of this, what did they get out of Copenhagen? They got some outcome but certainly not the outcome they wanted. It was completely silly of them."

Clinton called for spying on other diplomats as soon as she took office as secretary of State. Documents unearthed by WikiLeaks show that she signed an order telling U.S. diplomats to spy on Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the U.N., and other top U.N. officials. She asked her people to get biometric information, such as DNA, fingerprints and iris scans, as well as passwords and personal encryption used in private and commercial networks for official communications. She also asked for Internet and intranet usernames, email addresses, website URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers and work schedules.

With this penchant for spying, we are entitled to know if Clinton was involved in the latest revelations to come from the never-ending Snowden disclosures.

Morris's contempt for the Clintons appears to be quite genuine and even to the point of overriding logic as we see here. He has never met a subject on which he does not feel qualified to opine. Apparently his syllogism is that because due to his being a polling and Clinton expert on FOX he is an expert on any subject covered by FOX.

Yes, a brain injury. No, it shouldn't be Republicans pointing it out.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Why did Hillary Clinton wear those glasses after her concussion?

Technically, Republican strategist Karl Rove was correct when he suggested that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffered a “traumatic brain injury” after a fall in 2012. A concussion is the most common form of mild traumatic brain injury, according to experts in the field. It is caused by a blow to the head or an action that bounces the brain around in the skull, such as whiplash from a car accident.

Symptoms can include headache, dizziness, sensitivity to light and blurred vision, all of which can occur even when MRI and CT scans are normal, said Steven Galetta, a neuro-opthalmologist at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York.Rove’s comment that when Clinton appeared in public after recuperating “she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury,” referred to a lens or lenses that the former first lady wore for a short period after her concussion and a subsequent blood clot that developed in her brain. Known as a Fresnel prism, the device helps treat double vision, especially for close-up viewing, experts said.

Special lines in the prism bend light seen by one eye and align it with the image seen by the other, according to Galetta and a representative of the company that distributes the lenses. The prism can be in the form of a clear plastic overlay that is pasted to the lens of eyeglasses in cases, such as Clinton’s, when the double vision is expected to be temporary, or can be ground into the lens for longer-term use, according to Laura Balcer, director of the Concussion Center at NYU Langone medical center. When built into the eyeglass lens itself, the prism is not visible, Balcer said.

On Tuesday, Rove distanced himself from a provocative report in Monday’s New York Post, saying he does not believe — as the newspaper asserted he had said — that Clinton suffered “brain damage” when she fell and sustained a head injury in December 2012. The fall was attributed to dehydration from a stomach virus, and Clinton subsequently developed a blood clot, which was treated.

One of my fellow neurologist friend whose politics would fit well on this board said she was lucky to come out of it without (obvious) brain damage. It is not my area, but my understanding from him is that some of these people do suffer strokes and permanent brain damage.

Of course she had immediate and top of the line care. Suppose it was someone who was home alone.

Well, this is true that the Republican establishment has an incredible knack for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory (Hello, Mr. Karl Rove,) but I hope that we all focus hard on this midterm election THIS year and work hard for true conservative candidates. Then, if God forbid, this horrid woman should become President, we can keep her in check.

Frankly, I'm still not completely convinced that Obama intends to leave office on schedule. We've got to cripple him for these last couple of years, regardless.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

by BEN SHAPIRO 19 May 2014 The media are on a mission to protect Hillary no matter what the cost. And that means they’ll invalidate any attack on her as beyond the pale, over the top, and underhanded. Even if she or her husband have used precisely the same angles of attack on her opponents in the past.

Age and Health. This week, the media went berserk over Karl Rove’s suggestion that Hillary Clinton underwent brain damage. President Clinton, while maintaining that Hillary had to do six months of tough recovery, stated, “First, they said she faked her concussion and now they say she is auditioning for her part on ‘The Walking Dead.’” The media brayed that it would be entirely inappropriate for Republicans to talk about Clinton’s age or health.

Ignoring, of course, the fact that Bill Clinton had no problem attacking Bob Dole’s age in 1996. In typically passive-aggressive fashion, Clinton stated in a debate with Dole, “I can only tell you that I don’t Senator Dole is too old to be President, but it’s the age of his ideas that I question.”

What Did She Know and When Did She Know It? Hillary’s defenders have stated that questions about Benghazi have been answered. On Sunday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) stated, “I think it’s a hunting mission for a lynch mob.” Not coincidentally, Feinstein praised Hillary to the skies, stating, “In my view, she’s in the prime of her political life. She’s got the energy; she’s articulate; she’s got the background; she’s got the smarts; she has all of the elements of a good leader.” Feinstein simply wrote off questions about why her State Department refused requests for additional security, why the State Department did not request military intervention, and why the State Department took part in manipulating talking points presented to the American people.

Meanwhile, Democrats and media personalities have dismissed the fact that Clinton refused to designate the Islamist terror group Boko Haram a terror group.

But it was Hillary on the floor of the Senate, standing with newspaper outstretched in 2002, the headline blaring, “BUSH KNEW.” She then stated, “We have learned that President Bush had been informed last year, before September 11, of a possible plot by those associated with Osama Bin Laden to hijack a US airliner.”

But when she was in a position of power, her ignorance was bliss – and now it’s off limits.

She’s Never Accomplished Anything. None of Hillary’s supporters seem to be able to answer the simplest question about her: with all of her power and prestige, what has she actually accomplished? And yet that question has now been deemed irrelevant – we all know what she’s done, even if no one ever knows what she’s done.

When Hillary Clinton was running against a young Senator named Barack Obama, however, Obama’s lack of accomplishment was central to Hillary’s campaign. “An untested man who offers false hope,” she said. “On a lot of these issues it is hard to know where he stands, and people need to ask that...Where’s the beef?”

She Goes Missing When Stakes Are Highest. When the manure hit the fan in Benghazi, Hillary went completely AWOL. In the aftermath of the attacks, she sent out uninvolved UN ambassador Susan Rice to take the hits on the Sunday shows. She then jetted off to Australia for a wine tasting. But we’re supposed to ignore her complete absence during the most critical period of her tenure as Secretary of State.

She wasn’t so generous to Obama during their 2008 race, when her campaign crafted an ad suggesting that if the red phone rang at 3 a.m., Obama wouldn’t be there to pick it up.

Hillary’s Marriage Is A Sham. Now that Bill and Hillary are back in the spotlight, many Americans are wondering just how their business relationship will work again in the White House. They’re wondering if they want the drama of the Arkansan Carringtons. That’s off limits. Or so say the media, who are the self-appointed arbiters of appropriateness (even when they’re spilling the juicy details of Bill’s Oval Office doings).

But it was Hillary attacking other women back when her husband was president. Not only did she attack Monica Lewinsky as an insane narcissist, she reportedly attempted to discredit “trailer trash” Gennifer Flowers. And she tried to have her husband’s campaign plant rumors that George H.W. Bush had cheated on Barbara Bush.

Turn Up The Heat On ClintonBy DICK MORRISPublished on TheHill.com on May 20, 2014

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has characterized her place in history as akin to a runner in a relay race: taking the baton, running her laps as best she can, and then handing it off to John Kerry, her successor.

But the actual record indicates that, rather than a relay, her role in Iranian sanctions might better be compared to a high hurdles race -- with Clinton erecting the hurdles.

In her full-throated defense of her tenure as America's top diplomat, delivered to the American Jewish Committee last week, Clinton touted her efforts to impose, strengthen and enforce sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop its nuclear weapons program. But the record shows she fought tooth and nail against each new round of sanctions and had her minions in the State Department do all they could to kill them.

In her speech, she said, "We went after Iran's oil industry, banks, and weapons programs, enlisted insurance firms, shipping lines, energy companies, financial institutions and others to cut Iran off from global commerce."

Her supposed role in backing sanctions against Iran was the only specific part of her tenure or legacy that she chose to mention.

But the record contradicts even this claim. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) who, along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), led the battle for sanctions, says that she was on the other side.

"Secretary Clinton's comments are a blatant revision of history," he told The Daily Beast. "The fact is the Obama Administration has opposed sanctions every step of the way as was thoroughly documented at the time."

The record is clear, documented in The Daily Beast.Click Here To Sign The Petition To Give Congress Power To Veto Final Iran Deal!

In 2009, the administration opposed the passage of gasoline sanctions against Iran, which eventually passed unanimously.

In 2011, Clinton sent her undersecretary, Wendy Sherman, to state her "strong opposition" to sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran.

Sherman said it would antagonize U.S. allies. She even had her top deputy at the State Department, Bill Burns, meet with top senators to oppose the amendment. It eventually passed unanimously.

Menendez angrily accused the administration of negotiating in bad faith, saying "at your request, we engaged in an effort to come to a bipartisan agreement ... and now you come here and vitiate that agreement."

The administration, reportedly, was afraid that "the SWIFT-related sanctions would cause too much disruption to the system."

Also in 2012, the administration battled for a six-month delay in additional sanctions. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that "the decision not to crack down immediately on gold exports ... ultimately allowed the Iranians to blow a massive hole in the international financial sanctions." Iran was able to sell oil to Turkey in return for gold to shore up its dwindling hard currency reserves.

Clinton's one apparent contribution to the enforcement of sanctions was her help in lining up votes in the United Nations Security Council, but even this claim may backfire. Recent leaks from Edward Snowden indicate that former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice requested the National Security Agency help in spying on swing votes in the council: Nigeria, Bosnia, Gabon and Uganda. Did the secretary of State use NSA surveillance to get the votes?

Clinton's role in surveillance has been largely unexplored. It deserves more scrutiny.

Clinton writes that she takes responsibility for the deaths, but adds that there has been "a regrettable amount of misinformation, speculation and flat-out deceit" by some in politics and the media.

"I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It's just plain wrong, and it's unworthy of our great country," Clinton writes. "Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me."

Can anyone think of anything more infuriating than this? IS this the best America can do? A shyster lying slob. The corruption is mind boggling.

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I will relish the opportunity to watch Hillary squirm under Trey Gowdy's aggressive questioning. I hope it happens. She and her husband are a disgrace to this nation. The thought of her as a Presidential candidate is nauseating.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

I think our Founding Fathers expected the foibles and weaknesses of human nature-- it's why they wrote the Constitution as they did. The Americana Creed is a magnificent one. It does poorly now because we have not taught it. It is no coincidence that I quote our FF (hat tip to "Patriot Post") some 5 days a week both here and on FB-- so that over time people get a sense of the depth and wisdom of the American Creed.

"The Americana Creed is a magnificent one. It does poorly now because we have not taught it."

That is certainly part of it. The educators today at least at the University level spend too much time making us ashamed than proud as it was when I grew up.

I recall my sixth grade teacher. He pointed out a famous picture in our history book showing the two trains connecting from the East and West Coasts and people sitting on the trains waving bouquets of flowers. Celebrating the first complete trans America railroad. He told us something I didn't know or realize. He said this picture is a drawing from a real photograph. Well one can google the real photo. The people are not waving flowers. They are waving whiskey bottles. I recall he was irritated about the dishonesty in our textbooks.

I later found out he was gay. So I suppose he had an emotional axe to grind so to speak. That said he was without a doubt the very best grade school teacher I ever had. He taught us things I still vividly remember today. Architecture, Civil War history, Russian Revolution history, and more. I think I saw him once back in the early eighties at a Fourth of July fireworks. I wish I had gone up to him to verify it was him so I could tell him he was the best teacher of my life. I am sure that would have meant something for him. My sister is a teacher and I've seen previous students and parents of students of hers do that. I know she feels great.

Any way I am going way off topic.

Back to the bigger less personal topic at hand. Yes children growing up being taught to hate America is a travesty. Especially from a population of people whose alternative is total totaliarism. But that is only part of it. There is still other causes like bribing voters with other peoples' monies, people coming in from countries who do not believe in capitalism, and are quite happy to have endless benefits.

The racial and gender divides......

Look at the Pope from Argentina. Look at the liberal Jews who descended from fascist, socialist Europe. Their warped answers to everything is a bigger and more powerful state. These people have no clue what the founders understood. Indeed they now admonish our founders as just a bunch of rich white Christain men.......

By Walter Russell Mead, Published: May 30Walter Russell Mead is the James Clarke Chace professor of foreign affairs at Bard College and editor at large of the American Interest. He is the author of “Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World.”...For some realists, “global meliorism” — the belief that U.S. foreign policy can and should try to make a better world — is a dirty word. For Clinton, it is a bedrock conviction. “We are the force for progress, prosperity and peace,” she said during a remarkable speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in early 2013.http://translations.state.gov/st/english/texttrans/2013/01/20130131141925.html#axzz338KQJdUR...These ambitious new ideas [focus on the rights of women and girls, and emphasis on Internet freedom and connectivity]— though not amounting to the Clinton “doctrine” foreign policy junkies hunger for — could come back to haunt us. The U.S. emphasis on human rights and democracy, as well as the active support for civil society organizations, contributed to China’s harsh response to the pivot to Asia and probably deepened Vladi­mir Putin’s view of the West as a danger to Russia. For Moscow and Beijing, Washington’s work to engage and strengthen democracy activists and movements represents an aggressive effort to undermine the Russian and Chinese regimes. And the push for changing gender relations allows Islamists to portray the United States as a threat to religious values. American opponents often fear ideological and cultural “aggression” as much as U.S. military power....Historians will probably consider Clinton significantly more successful than run-of-the-mill secretaries of state such as James G. Blaine or the long-serving Cordell Hull, but don’t expect to see her on a pedestal with Dean Acheson or John Quincy Adams anytime soon.

On pins and needles I will wait for her big, exclusive, hard-hitting interview with Diane Sawyer. Meanwhile a couple of questions I would pass forward:

1) Tell us everything you said and did during the 8+ hours of the Benghazi crisis to try to persuade the President to use all available means to support and rescue your ambassador and the Americans that were left to die at the hands of terrorists attacking Americans and America in an act of war on September 11, 2012 in which Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were murdered.

2) Tell us everything you would have said and done at every juncture during that crisis to get help to the compound if the Ambassador's name or his assistant there was not Chris Steven but Chelsea Clinton. Same answer as the first question, right?

1) Tell us exactly when you learned the video had NOTHING to do with the attack and why you still refuse to admit that.

2) Tell us why you were blaming a video as an acceptable excuse to attack our embassy and kill 4 Americans and it was necessary to almost apologize to and excuse the actions of terrorists on behalf of our country.

3) Why are you qualified to be President when you cannot be hones and level with Americans?

her marriagegrandmother statussleeping in to 8 AMso involvedtime to break the highest glass ceilingpost more botox and a quarter inch of makeupsaving the elephantsgetting to know her [again]the real Hillary behind the scenesand of course an "oh my gosh"

her marriagegrandmother statussleeping in to 8 AMso involvedtime to break the highest glass ceilingpost more botox and a quarter inch of makeupsaving the elephantsgetting to know her [again]the real Hillary behind the scenesand of course an "oh my gosh"

Yes - it appears to be on. That's how you sell books. This book is meaningless but the money beats working for a living. The next book will be the blueprint for her Presidency if she is running.

The deadline for not running is coming up shortly - after the book revenue runs its course, after the midterms in November, about the same time Hillary becomes a Grandma.

The Oh my "Gosh" statement (more likely uttered with f-words) was that they couldn't believe they could just sit and watch TV, OMG! That's the image on sale here, just Bill and Hill together snuggling up watching TV - like the walk on the beach after Monica. I'm visualizing more of a living room war-room where both have staff bustling around, Bill's mostly young and busty, and Hillary with Huma and some focus group managers going over the Obamanomic plowhorse damage demographic by demographic, and the TV in the background

My cover all bases prediction was that she will not run, won't win the Dem nomination if she runs and won't win the Presidency if she runs and is nominated. Looking wrong on all counts, but I stand by it.

The 2016 table is getting set with Obama scandal and malaise fatigue along with recurring Hillary-fatigue, while the opposition is poised to sweep the 2014 elections and enter with fresh faces and fresh ideas for 2016. She will need to separate herself from Obama, on the past and on policy, without pissing him off because she will need his complete cooperation to have a chance - of all his staff and his magical Get Out The Vote operation right while she is separating herself. She needs to sound like him, hope and change, the first fill in a different blank President, the winning formula, and yet not sound like him or govern like him. More like Pelosi, we need a woman to clean up the House, how is that going? And she will need Bill disciplined on a short leash, mostly quiet, but ready to pull off his magic from time to time because she is a run of the mill politician without him. Two for the price of one? Again? Meanwhile, aging and health issues are plaguing both of them. The end of 8 years of a (hypothetic) Hillary administration is 34 years after the start of the 1992 campaign and 48 years after being 'elected' First Lady of Arkansas. They were the new generation, full of excitement and promise. Still true? I don't think so.

Doug,"My cover all bases prediction was that she will not run, won't win the Dem nomination if she runs and won't win the Presidency if she runs and is nominated"Well you do make three predictions here.How are you so sure?'Inside info' you can share here?

Yes, there is some hedging there with the 3 predictions. I am only certain that she is not a great politician and this is not great timing for her to achieve her (disappearing) dream. If Obama approval was at 60%, healthcare was roaring, the plowhorse was in a canter, and people were demanding more, she would be the gal.

On paper, to a Dem, she has a perfect resume. Executive, Legislative, and Foreign Policy experience. She was co-President during a rather successful administration. She served in the US Senate. She ws Secretary of State. She is a woman. And she leads in ALL polls!

But a resume is not a list of titles held. It is the basis for a discussion about what you accomplished in the roles that you had. Each of these is loaded with problems. She wasn't really co-President. The part they gave to her she bungled. Her husband didn't grow the economy - until he partnered with a Republican congress. Even before that he ran as a split with the politically failed left. She won her Senate seat in the yellowest of yellow states. (Formerly called Blue) And did it as a sitting First Lady, the easiest place to get an approval rating up. She accomplished nothing positive in the Senate. She has already run for President as certain frontrunner and people on her own side ran away from her. Her Sec of State record is loaded with ALL kinds of problems, and those WILL be scrutinized. First female President would be more exciting if it was not right after first half-Black President. Also someone a little more feminine... ?! But we are electing a President and policy direction, not a portrait. Issues will be front and center, the economy and the dangerous world. She can't perfectly triangulate a serious split with Obama while needing and securing all of his help. At some point they will say F-U. We don't even know that Bill won't undercut her too. The age and health thing is real in terms of energy (and look), if not real problems. The rising crop of Republicans are in their early 40s. The job of running all these functions of government is grueling. She didn't even stay up for Benghazi.

She got popular by stepping away from the day to day issues. She wins early polls with name recognition. Her own publicists can't name her achievements other than holding high posts, traveling great distances and knowing many names. The campaign is harder than that and more and more missteps will come up. Example today, she favors the Taliban deal?! Any chance she will shrink away from that in the next 2 years? Not based on hard facts already known but based on public reaction that she TOTALLY misjudged.

As a Republican I would be far more afraid of another unknown Democratic outsider from across the heartland emerging with any charisma who can draw a distinction between themselves and the Democratic past. (I see Hickenlooper leading in Colo again.) Bill Clinton didn't come to the Presidency as a frontrunner. He had no chance of the nomination until Mario Cuomo stepped out and they were left with something more like the 1988 seven dwarfs again. Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey?

Mostly I have an optimism that America, including some core Dem constituency groups, will figure this out - eventually. Without that blind and maybe stupid optimism it is hard to care or go on.

You make a good argument. My position one can never underestimate the Clinton machine. No matter how unbelievably dishonest Bill would be, let alone her, they would always manage to weasel out of trouble still on their feet.

I would like to place some heavy duty wagers with you:

1) If she doesn't run I buy dinner. If she does I get a dinner.

2) If she doesn't win the Democratic nomination I buy lunch. If she does you buy lunch.

You make a good argument. My position one can never underestimate the Clinton machine. No matter how unbelievably dishonest Bill would be, let alone her, they would always manage to weasel out of trouble still on their feet.

I would like to place some heavy duty wagers with you:1) If she doesn't run I buy dinner. If she does I get a dinner.2) If she doesn't win the Democratic nomination I buy lunch. If she does you buy lunch.3) If she wins the Presidency I get breakfast. IF not you do.

Okay, you're on. But if Hillary wins the Presidency, as GM alludes, we may be in the bunker eating the end of the canned food. My treat!

At the end of this ordeal I hope we can close the thread while the Clintons ride off quietly off into the night never to be heard from again.

Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton raised $200 million in 10 months for their foundation’s endowment, positioning the nonprofit to survive even if its cash-collecting namesakes engage in a 2016 presidential run.

With four-fifths of their $250-million target in the bank, they are also changing fundraising strategies to include small donors -- a tactic that would create a list that could be politically useful, as well.

The Clintons’ initial appeals for foundation money were to contributors who could give $1 million or more. Those answering that call included Irish cell phone billionaire Denis O’Brien, and Bill Austin, owner of Minnesota’s Starkey Laboratories. Others were charities founded by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu -- the world’s second richest man -- and one run by Chicago venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker and his wife.

“As with many of the nation’s leading non-profit organizations, an endowment will provide the Clinton Foundation with the permanent capacity to support established and new programs and responsibly plan for the future,” Craig Minassian, the group’s chief communications officer, said in an e-mail.

The race to build an endowment is a sign that the foundation is maturing, that 67-year-old former President Bill Clinton won’t always be able to serve as its chief rainmaker, and that the time for Hillary Clinton, 66, to settle the question of her presidential ambitions is running out, said three people involved in the endowment project who asked for anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the fundraising effort.

The foundation’s officials are compiling a list of investment management firms to maintain the fund, and will soon put out a request for proposals, a foundation official familiar with the strategy said.

Establishing and funding the endowment now is important because a return by the Clintons to the political stage will also require a shift from generating cash for the foundation to financing the campaign, said those involved in the current fundraising drive.

That shift in status, from private to public life, also would mean the couple could be subject to conflict-of-interest charges if foundation donations are sought from those with interests before the federal government.

Avoiding Conflicts

Also, raising an endowment prior to a presidential run will ensure the foundation doesn’t starve a potential Clinton super-political action committee, said Craig Holman, the government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group. Super-PACs that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money didn’t exist during Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Historically, many of the people who could give to a Clinton Foundation would have maxed out to the Clinton campaign,” Holman said. “Now they can throw all that money at the candidate herself.”

U.S. law bans foreigners such as billionaires Slim and O’Brien from contributing to political campaigns, so a potential Clinton campaign wouldn’t be competing for their dollars.

During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama tried unsuccessfully to pressure the Clinton Foundation to reveal its donors. As part of the deal struck for Hillary Clinton to join Obama’s administration as secretary of state, the foundation agreed to disclose its contributors.

Donor Disclosure

The backers of the endowment will be listed along with other supporters in annual public disclosures going forward, according to a foundation official.

At a minimum, the Clintons simply wouldn’t have the time to nurture the endowment or foundation in the midst of a presidential campaign. If she runs and wins, the foundation could be deprived of their fundraising prowess for a decade.

The fundraising drive will be a hot topic of hallway conversations today when top donors -- including some who wrote checks for the endowment -- gather at Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. headquarters in Manhattan for the organization’s annual spring briefing on programs.

The Clintons’ urgency is evident in the speed at which they have been generating donations.

“Most small or medium foundations wouldn’t be able to raise that kind of money in a year,” said Reina Mukai, a research manager at the New York-based Foundation Center, which tracks philanthropy. “It’s fairly unique.”

Small-Donor Event

In September, the foundation will hold a $1,000-a-head reception at the Italian Embassy in Washington. For $25,000, a couple will be able to dine after the reception with Bill and Hillary Clinton at the Washington home they’ve kept. A check for $50,000 includes dinner and an invitation to the New York-based foundation’s next donor conference.

Bill Clinton, advised by longtime aide Doug Band, created the Clinton Foundation shortly after leaving the White House in 2001. In 2012, it took in $54.7 million in revenue and ended the year with $183.6 million in assets. Its endowment, though, was just $292,000.

In the past dozen years, the foundation sprouted 11 separate arms, from the Clinton Global Initiative to Hillary Clinton’s “Too Small To Fail” project, which was founded in 2013 to improve the health of children younger than 6 years old.

Whether or not Hillary Clinton runs for president, foundation officials said it makes sense to set up a mechanism for building the family’s legacy “in perpetuity.”

One Clinton confidant described a maturation process at the foundation that made an endowment a natural move.

Start-Up Tendencies

In its early years, this person said, the foundation was more like a start-up, trying to figure out how to make it each year. More recently, its officers have begun considering how to make sure it can endure for decades.

While the $250 million level may secure the operation of existing programs, it hardly puts the Clinton foundation in the same league as those with the names Ford, Gates or Rockefeller attached to them.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, reports having an endowment of $40.2 billion -- 160 times the size of the Clinton Foundation’s goal. At $32.7 billion, Harvard University ranks first on the list of major college endowments.

The Clinton goal compares more closely to the size of the endowment of former President Jimmy Carter’s Atlanta-based foundation, which reported having a $460 million endowment in 2011.

Foundation Turnaround

The success of the Clinton fundraising drive marks a turnaround for a foundation that, according to the New York Times, was rife with disorganization and incurred about $40 million in deficits in 2007 and 2008. Bill Clinton disputed the account.

In July, the Clintons reorganized its staff, removing Chief Executive Officer Bruce Lindsey from day-to-day management and installing Eric Braverman from McKinsey & Company in his place.

As the foundation announced those changes, Bill Clinton added a request. “We need an endowment,” Clinton said in Aug. 13 open letter posted on the foundation’s website “which our family and friends are working to raise.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Allen in Washington at jallen149@bloomberg.net; Annie Linskey in Washington at alinskey@bloomberg.net

Hillary Clinton will likely be the next president of the United States, and why not? We live in an age of choreographed reality, and hers is among the most choreographed of lives. Also, an age of the triumph of symbol over substance and narrative over fact; an age that demonstrates the power of the contention that truth matters only to the extent people want it to matter. Mrs. Clinton's career is testimony to these things as well.

Which brings me to the subject of her book.

I obtained an advance copy of "Hard Choices," her latest doorstop of a memoir, and started reading it before its publication Tuesday. There she is, bitterly regretting her vote to authorize the war in Iraq. There she is again, standing by her actions during the Benghazi debacle, insisting on the relevance of the "Innocence of Muslims" video.

Elsewhere we find her equivocating over her opposition to the Iraq surge (which, as we learned from Robert Gates's memoir "Duty," she privately admitted was purely political), or allowing that the Obama administration's decision to stand silent over the stolen 2009 Iranian revolution was something she "came to regret."

Addressing the Marketing Nation Summit in San Francisco, April 8. ASSOCIATED PRESSAnd so on. But to go point-by-point through the prose would be to miss the book's true purpose. Like Victorian children who were supposed to be seen but not heard, this is a book that is supposed to be bought but not read, discussed but not examined, excerpted but not critiqued.

In fact, it's not really a book at all. It is an artifact containing printed words, an event conveying political seriousness. Perhaps it could have been written at half its length (635 pages) with twice the interest. But that would have made it easier to read from start to finish, defeating its own purpose of being big and therefore, presumably, weighty. Ceci n'est pas une pipe, wrote (or painted) René Magritte. Just so with "Hard Choices": Ceci n'est pas un livre.

How then, are we supposed to understand the memoir?

Surely it isn't about the money. Her publishers at Simon & Schuster are reported to have paid a $14 million advance for "Hard Choices," a nice raise from the $8 million she got for her first memoir, "Living History." After taxes and ghostwriting expenses (in the acknowledgments, Mrs. Clinton credits her "book team" for "making sense of my scribbles") the fee isn't so eye-popping.

Surely it isn't about the story, either. Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's secretary of state, told the riveting tale of how the Cold War began—and how the U.S. organized itself to fight it—in "Present at the Creation." George Shultz told the inside story of how the Reagan administration won the Cold War in "Turmoil and Triumph." Probably the best of the diplomatic genre, at least from a literary point of view, are the first two volumes of Henry Kissinger's memoirs, "White House Years" and "Years of Upheaval."

These books are important not (or not merely) as personal testimonies or historical documents. They describe the complex process by which a diplomat pursues great aims under the concrete pressure of events using the cumbersome mechanisms of government. They are arguments for policy and manuals for statesmanship.

Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, doesn't really have a story to tell: Her book is an assemblage of anecdotes, organized geographically, held together by no overarching theme, or underlying analysis, or ultimate accomplishment. In April she was asked to name her proudest achievements as secretary. She fumbled for an answer, as well she might. There are none.

Nor, finally, is it about the argument. What is Mrs. Clinton's version of Acheson's containment, or Mr. Kissinger's triangular diplomacy, or Mr. Shultz's muscular idealism? Perhaps it's what she used to call "smart power," a phrase that is more of an intellectual conceit than a foreign-policy concept. Calling your diplomacy smart doesn't make it smart. Saying isn't showing. And showing off isn't doing.

Which brings me back to the real purpose of the book.

However one feels about Mrs. Clinton, she was the least consequential secretary of state since William Rogers warmed the seat in the early years of the Nixon administration. This is mainly the fault of the president for whom Mrs. Clinton worked, and of the White House hacks who had the larger hand in setting the tone and shape of foreign policy. Most everyone knows this, and most everyone doesn't want to admit it. So in place of a record we have a book.

Then again, Mrs. Clinton has, prospectively, the most consequential future of any secretary since James Buchanan (the last of her predecessors to become president). How does she secure her ambition?

There is a Platonic dialogue, the "Phaedrus," which observes that the surest way to forget is to write it down. Preferably in minute detail, at extravagant length. If there's a book you can consult, no need to remember it for yourself. "You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding," warns Socrates, "and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom."

Mrs. Clinton has produced a book that asks us to forget her tenure as secretary of state. It's going to be a blockbuster.

"Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, doesn't really have a story to tell: Her book is an assemblage of anecdotes, organized geographically, held together by no overarching theme, or underlying analysis, or ultimate accomplishment. In April she was asked to name her proudest achievements as secretary"

This is the story of her entire life not just as Sec of State. Her whole persona has been one of a defiant hippy in search of something to rebel against.